January 9th
by Alex the Anachronistic
Summary: A slightly AU oneshot that mostly consists of Snape's secret thoughts on Christmas. The rest is pretty predictable. Originally composed for my story "HP and the Mistaken Identity" but significantly edited to stand on its own.


**Warning:** This is an old story that I just polished up a little bit. I wrote it during 2006, I'm fairly certain, if not 2005. Never typed until now. Set in an Alternate Universe (AU) wherein Snape, after killing Dumbledore, returns to Hogwarts under the guise of a young American wizard, named Gary de Rhone, through the use of polyjuice. He obviously has to don a whole new personality to fit his character, and he ends up extremely popular.

_Disclaimer: I'm not kidding when I say that I'm not J.K. _

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

**January 9th**

Gary/Snape meandered down the hall of Hogwarts after concluding his day's work in the library. He had been researching the methods and arithmantic qualifications of Jengus Jullion III, the inventor of the Sinus Alleviatory Potion, which was a precursor for the modern Pepper-Up, attempting to find a link between the usage of horehound and the usage of thyme in the potion.

The term began on January 10th, so this was his last day of freedom, but students were already back from their homes mysteriously filled with well-being and holiday cheer. The passage was nonetheless desolate, except for a few scattered groups of girls who lingered hopefully near bunches of mistletoe. Snape in Gary's form had to carefully evade said students lest he be taken by surprise with an 'oops!' or other implausible entreaty.

He pondered for the fiftieth time that week as he sidestepped a ravenous heavyset Hufflepuff, _I really ought to have chosen a beast uglier than myself for this sad experiment, not someone fifteen years younger with nice skin, a handsome face, and pretty hair. _Indeed, as a result of his disguise, for the first time in his life all the girls were after him.

While in Gary's form he had a rather pudgy, incredibly inferior nose, Snape still retained the mental skill of separating different scents as he met them. He delicately sniffed the air and captured the fragrances of pine, cold snow, and candles. The heavy, nostalgic smell filled his nostrils and chilled his throat with ts freshness.

Tapers of different colored flames blinked and twirled merrily as they hovered in the air, gracefully increasing and decreasing in velocity as though they were being twisted on invisible threads and let go only to twist up again. Reds, yellows, greens, blues, oranges, and violets cast their reflections over the shiny smooth castle floor and walls, giving the world an appearance of being beneath a gigantic stained-glass window on a sunny afternoon. Nothing, it seemed, had been left untouched by the Christmas Cold. He knew tomorrow the cold would be cured, however, as the house-elves would administer Normalcy-Pepper-Up to the entire castle and thus disappear every vestige of Christmas phlegm from the interior organs of Hogwarts. At this, the Snape within Gary de Rhone felt a little sad.

When in his usual state of Snape-iness, Severus never gave an indication that he enjoyed the frivolous holiday. Any loss of decorum or stringency, any disregard for his premeditated principles would deem him a hypocrite, and make people lose respect for him. This is why typically he treated December 25th and the season surrounding the celebration without discrimination, acting surprised when Minerva presented him with her perfunctory Christmas Scarf, and when Albus bequeathed to him via cardboard box a strange object probably from the depths of the old man's bedroom closet, and when Madame Pince dropped off a book or two that she thought he might enjoy . . . yes, he pretended to forget about Christmas, but it really was impossible even if he desired to do so.

However, all this was to hide the fact that Severus Snape actually liked Christmas. Secretly, internally, he loved the holiday beyond any other. It was for this reason that he overwhelmed the world with his cruel 'Bah Hambug!'-esque greetings, usually more cynical and scathing than the classic Scroogian slogan. He had learned long ago that telling people that you love something instantly makes them want to take it away from you in punishment. His parents, his peers in school, Voldemort, and Dumbledore all operated in that fashion. Life tended to have a cursed taint for him. Therefore, he normally hid is sentimentality and celebrated alone with some gingerbread cookies, a bottle of champagne and a good phonograph record.

As Gary de Rhone, however, it was not necessary to hide his love for the celebration of Christ's birth. This year, Snape was free to enjoy Christmas as openly as he chose, and he chose to be very overt. He attended every staff and private party that he was invited to--which was quite a many, given his personable and affable new personality--and greeted everyone with a beaming smile that would be anathema to his normal visage. Flitwick and Hagrid had had him help put up the big pine in the Great Hall back at the beginning of December. The Cooking Club had invited him to bake cookies with them the first weekend of that month. The entire Ravenclaw Tower had asked him to join in their last Friday-night debate of the term, 'Santa or No Santa?' In short, he was a very popular man that season.

Now it was basically over--back to school mode was already settling down amid the drying pine needles and the dripping wax and the discarded wrapping paper. For instance, now there was a mandatory staff meeting in the Teacher's Lounge.

Snape/Gary sighed. _Only a good many months until June. Just got to keep going on with this facade until then. _

He approached the teacher's lounge door. Voices chattered inside excitedly, but, as he put his hand to the old iron handle to push open the heavy oak doors, the voices stilled.

_Curious. _

Entering, Gary/Snape noticed that the place was decorated just as it had been for the duration of the Christmas season, but with some additional paper streamers, balloons, and a cake in the center of the room.

_Oh!_

Everyone was staring at him. Someone in the back (probably Hagrid) harumphed expectantly, and then everyone jostled to swamp him, singing _For He's a Jolly Good Fellow. _

Gary/Snape stood, looking for all the world as though someone had thrown a pie at him. "Oh . . . my . . ." he began to say.

The song concluded, and all the teachers screamed "Happy Birthday!" and eveyone began to jabber congratulations to him, their jubilatious remarks and celebratory huzzahs ringing in his ears. People were shaking his hand and patting him on the shoulder.

Snape had never received a surprise party before, and now, even in the guise of Gary de Rhone, he was immensely surprised. He supposed that it was a fortunate thing that no one had ever cared about his birthday in all the years Severus Snape taught at Hogwarts, because if people noticed the similarity of birthdays between the old and new teachers, his cover might have been blown. Chastising himself for automatically writing 'January 9' as opposed to naming some day in August, Gary/Snape caught his bearings and went with the flow, acting as gracious as though everyone did this for him every year everywhere he went and although he was 'quite used to it' he could 'not help but be grateful for being so well accepted here'.

The party seemed to carry on for hours, and they never got to the official meeting part beyond McGonagall asking if everyone had updated their syllabuses for such-and-such new code established by the Ministry this new year, and everyone had because it was already a code of Hogwarts syllabuses anyway. Eventually the crowd left the Teacher's Lounge and the Birthday Boy, and Gary/Snape was covered in a pile of presents about half the size of what he had received for Christmas two weeks before.

As he surveyed the motley assortment with vague pride (distorted by the punch which someone had spiked) he experienced the nasty feeling in the back of his mind that if he had been in his normal Snapian state, no one would have considered doing this for him save the occasional philanthropian Hufflepuff with an obsession for 'fixing' him and his broken soul. Even in that scenario, the only other guests would be minimal in number--perhaps two of her friends would show up just to protect her from incurring his certain wrath. That would be it.

Oh well, the least he could do was play along with it. The time was soon coming when he was supposed to reveal his true identity to the world; let the suckers regret it later, if they dared!

. . . x . . . X . . . x . . .

_Haha! _HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEVVY. We love you. I'd probably be that philanthropic Hufflepuff, if I wasn't a stalwart Ravenclaw.


End file.
